Sylvia made constant stops at my apartment every few days for about a month, always in the dead of night. I had been leaving work early to come and spy on her, seeing what exactly she was planning to do, but every time she would just sigh and leave in a hurry. From what I could see, she still had the blood sample on her at all times. Was she getting cold feet about this entire ordeal? Was this just some sort of tactic to get me to empathize with her? I had no idea what the fuck was happening, and I wanted it to change.

There was no way in hell I was gonna tell anyone about this, otherwise that would just open up a new can of worms. If someone was gonna get the answers from Sylvia I was gonna be me and me alone. If she was actually a spy, then any sort of commotion from me to the guards was gonna scare her off.

So I decided enough was enough. This was going to end one way or another.

It was on the seventh visit that I found myself slowly sneaking up behind the gryphon spy in the shadows. All the pent up anger and frustration only fueled my careful footsteps. I remembered the conversation we had as we walked to work that morning, how nervous she seemed. It was painfully obvious now that if that wasn't just all an act, that she was genuinely worried about stealing the blood. Her running into me was probably one of the worst things that could have happened to her that morning. It just so happened that it was the same day that Cross sprung her trap on me, giving Sylvia the perfect chance to steal the blood.

I prayed that Discord wasn't watching as I got withing a few meters of the hooded gryphon. It was way to late for him to be up and keeping an eye on me, or at least that's what I kept telling myself. There was also a good chance he was watching and liked the show that was happening before him. Honestly, my life must have been like a really fucked up romcom for him to watch every night. Then again, if I had crazy chaos powers who knows that I would do?

My mind kept wandering to these things to distract myself from what I was about to do. Oh god... could I really do something like this? This was so risky, and there was a good chance I was gonna get stabbed again. There was also a good chance that this was some sort of trap laid out to lure me into an ambush. No, I had to do this! I needed to know the truth of what the fuck was going on!

I steeled my self one last time, taking a deep breath and preparing myself for the attack.

Syliva turned in shock to find me sprinting towards her with the energy only juiced up Olympic sprinter could have. The war cry that came from my mouth probably woke up several neighbors as I screamed with all the anger I could muster. My body felt like it was burning, especially my dying heart, which worked overtime as I neared ever closer to my target.

I could see her face now: it really was Sylvia, and she looked horrified at what she was witnessing. She most likely thought I was going to kill her, but I had other plans.

She let out a pained grunt as I threw my body into hers, taking us both to the ground. I made sure I wrapped my arms around her tightly in a death grip as my chest pressed firmly against hers, so that my trap would work as intended.

With a flash of blinding light, we fell onto a hard, wooden table set up in center of Canterlot palace's dining hall. There were several shouts of shock and horror at the sudden appearance of a man and a gryphon in the middle of a wrestling match flopping onto the table, but I was a little busy to take notice of who it was.

Sylvia struggled to break free, grunting and shouting obscenities all the while, eventually landing a hook to my face and knocking me off of the table. I fell to the floor, but the trap had already sprung; With a yelp she was pinned to the table by several guards and magic with absolutely no hope of escape.

I dizzily used the table to stand up and look at the dogpile now dragging the gryphon off of the table and putting her in manacles. It was then that I noticed the blood on her hoodie as Sylvia was lead out of the chamber and to the dungeons. My eyes drifted to the table where a large smear of blood coated the table where we fell, and then to by midsection which was also stained red from the crimson elixir.

Before I knew it, I was flipped around and my shirt was lifted suddenly by new assailants. I barely recognized Celestia as she frantically looked for the wound that would cause this much blood, but she calmed down when I gently grabbed her hand and forced her to look at me.

We both let out a sigh of relief before she gave my shoulder a good slug. "You bastard!" she half laughed, half chided. "That's why you wanted to meet up for tea so late at night!"

I smiled sheepishly and leaned against the table. "Yea, sorry," I apologized. "She had been checking out the apartment for a while now. I wanted to get the jump on her myself. If I had done anything out of the ordinary, I think she would have booked it."

"You idiot," Tia now fully scolded me, her scowl hiding her relief. "You could have been killed! You— where did all this blood come from?!"

"The sample she stole," I explained, just happy that this gamble turned out in my favor. "It must have broke in her pocket when I tackled her."

I told her everything, about Sylvia and the strange situation that had led up to this moment. Pulling out the teleportation button Discord had given me the days prior, she understood my intent. It was a gamble, but it looked like everything payed off in the end. I had no idea if it would actually teleport someone with me, but it was worth the risk. Now they could question Sylvia and I might finally get some answers.

"Discord's gonna be pissed when he finds out I put myself in danger specifically when he was looking away," I laughed as Tia and I slowly made our way up to her room. "He said you put his hide on the line."

The princess let out a not so innocent giggle as she looked away. "I intend to keep you around to the very end, Carter," she admitted. "Besides, it's not like Discord was doing much anyways. I had already assumed he was keeping tabs on you, since you keep seem to be running into each other."

And then something came to me. "Yea... that is strange," I admitted. "He really has been there for a lot of the shittier moments of my time here in Equestria. Always there to break some sort of bad news to me..." I stopped for a moment and looked at Celestia with a strange look in my eyes. Something wasn't right here. "Very recently, too— ever since I got that letter. No, even before that: we first met when I was being held here after saving Chrysalis."

"Was there something you did that day that would have gotten his attention other than saving Chrysalis?" she began to theorize with me. "For a being of chaos, he doesn't tend to meet new people without reason. He's rather antisocial when I think about it."

No, there wasn't anything that came to mind, but I still felt like that I was missing something. I thought about everything that had happened that day, but I didn't really do anything other than save Chrysalis' life. I was being held after that, so what brought Discord to me? A yawn interrupted my train of thought, and I looked up to find Tia covering her snout. "Oh, sorry," I honestly apologized, taking her hand and beginning up to her room again. "You must have had a busy day."

"Not particularly," she admitted with a genuine smile, "but thank you for your concern. I'm actually quite amazed you aren't tired at all, Carter. Countless hours at the hospital must have built up your tolerance to exhaustion."

I stopped dead in my tracks. "No... I'm usually wiped at the end of a long day." I turned and looked Celestia dead in the eyes. "At least before Discords started to... In fact, I've felt amazing recently." And then it hit me. "I have to go now," I said slowly, making my way backwards through the hall from where we had came. "Get some sleep! You look exhausted, Tia!"

"Where are you going, Carter?!" she called out in worry.

"I'm going for a drink!"

The door to The Entropy Shot burst open as I practically kicked the door down. As expected, Discord was up at the bar cleaning a glass like last time. He looked up with a smug grin and mischievous eyes as I marched over to the counter and slammed my hands down. "What the fuck have you been doing to me, you Mr. Potato Head-looking motherfucker?!" I shouted over the quite ambiance of a muffled band playing in the background of the bar.

Discord pretended to look shocked at my accusation, even so far as to shatter the glass against the wall behind him as his claw came up to his chest in surprise. "Whatever do you mean, Mister Bowman?" he mockingly said. "I have no clue what I've done to you!"

"That's some fucking bullshit and you know it."

My words were like blades, managing to cut through his facade, or at least I thought they did. "I'm telling you the truth, Carter," he said as he leaned forwards and put his smug face up to mine. "I really have no idea what I've done to you."

"What the fuck does that mean?" I questioned. "You've been giving me shit to drink ever since I figured out I was dying! A red drink when I first showed up here after getting the letter, and a green drink the day after! What—?!"

As if daring me to continue, Discord put a glass between us filled with a dark blue liquid. "It's on the house, my friend," he said as he pulled back and motioned to the drink. "I'm afraid everything after that is going to cost you."

I half wanted to throw the drink at him, but something told me to withhold my anger and thing rationally. "You said you have no idea what you're doing to me," I thought out loud, eyeing the drink. "Do you mean that literally?"

"I mean in the most literal sense possible," Discord confirmed. "I really have no idea what's happening to you right now. All I did was give you a few, good drinks to see if we have the same taste." Something was off about this entire situation, and I had no idea what it was. The glass gave a ring as the spirit of chaos tapped it with a talon again. "Come now, I didn't just pour you a good drink on the house for noting! When have I ever given you something that didn't sit well with you?"

There was an obvious hesitation as I picked up the surprisingly cold glass in my hand. This might have been playing right into Discord's claws, but I really didn't have anything left to lose. I was dead in a few months. With that thought, I slowly down the drink: a blueberry flavored soda of some kind, but it was completely flat. It wasn't bad, and only after a few moment did I place it back down onto the countertop completely empty.

"See?" Discord said as he took the glass from me. I reluctantly nodded my head in agreement as I sat down onto one of the bar stools. "I knew you would enjoy the blood of an winter spirit! It tastes great to all beings of chaos!"

Time stopped at the sudden information. "What?" was all I could get out in my shocked state.

"You heard me," Discord said with his sly grin. "It tastes great to beings of chaos, my little, hairless friend. I had my suspicions when you first face planted into Equestria, so I did a little digging, where I found out that little piece of info that I told you when we first met!"

"There aren't any known records of magic infused blood harming non-magic tissue," I remembered. "But how does that confirm that I'm a being of chaos?"

"Oh, that little bit alone doesn't prove anything," he admitted, "so I went and checked by giving you some of my favorite selections." With this, he motioned to the grand array of bottles behind him. "If you weren't a being of chaos, you would have been hurling for days at the taste of these!"

The news flooded my mind with new questions, each fighting for a place in the front of the queue. "Wait, so I'm a being of chaos? How? I would have thought Celestia or Luna would have noticed if I was the same as you!"

"Oh, I thought they would, too! But they didn't. So now here we are!" He laughed like a pyromaniac that had just discovered fireworks in his house and leaned back down to look me right in the eyes. "If your blood is already magical, why are you dying?"

"Do I look like an expert on magic to you, Discord," I spat back, eagerly awaiting his response. "You tell me, oh high and mighty lord of chaos."

He pouted, seemingly disappointed that I wouldn't guess and continued. "Well fine then, I guess I'll just go and spill everything then," he complained. "It's not that your body isn't magical, it's actually incredibly potent with a certain type of magic: Anti-Magic. And for you information, there have been records of magical blood harming anti-magical tissue."

I gave Discord one of the most deadpan stares I have ever given someone. "You seriously expect me to believe there's a type of magic out there called anti-magic?" I asked in complete disbelief. "This is all just one big joke, isn't it?"

"Oh well, fine then," Discord said, standing up straight and shrugging away his concern. "I guess I'll just take my idea to cure you and leave."

The bar stool went flying back as I stood with sudden vigor and excitement. My breath hitched in my throat as I looked at Discord with newfound hope. "You know how to cure me?!" The smile on my face was painful to bare, but it forced it's way onto either cheek. "How?! How do we do this?!"

Discord motioned for me to calm down and sit. "Easy there, partner. It's just an idea that I've been mulling over." I picked up the stool and sat back down, now with a new focus on the spirit. "Okay, so... we've established you're a being of chaos— check. I also may or may not have been giving you drinks made from the other ingredient of the elixir of life so now you're basically a walking dispenser of immortality—"

"WHAT!?!?" I screamed. "Are you saying anybody that drinks my blood now will become immortal?!"

"Uh... Look, I know it seems bad, but only we know about it," Discord admitted, ignoring all of my concern, "so don't freak out over it. I think I know what I'm doing."

"What are you doing, Discord!?" I shouted in panic. "What is the grand scheme of yours to cure me?!"

Discord looked at me for a moment with a look of contemplation, before shrugging and laying it all out on the table. "I was going to turn you into a spirit of chaos. I mean we're pretty much 90% of the way there already, so why not just do it? I could always use more hands on deck with chaos."

Dumbfounded, I looked to him with sheer horror. "A... what?! You want me to turn into you?! How is that ever possible?!"

"No, just a spirit of chaos," he tried to comfort me, but failed miserable at doing so. "Look, humans are beings of choice, the birthplace of all chaos. You'd just be an aspect of that. You'd get cool powers, stay the same guy— I really don't see what the big deal is here."

"I don't wanna look anything like a fucked up child's sketch!" I argued.

Now it was Discord's turn to deadpan at me. "Dude, really? Low blow." I was about to apologize when he just continued without care. "You won't turn into a draconequus, you'll stay completely the same, but with cool spirit powers like me. I don't see how this could be contrived as a bad deal."

I took a moment to digest the info given to me. A spirit? Me? The spirit of choice? How would Tia feel about this? How would everyone feel about this? But, this was the only way it looked like... "Okay, so how do we do this?"

"We do nothing!" Discord explained. "You have to die."

"What?!" I shouted in confusion. "That's what I'm trying to avoid!"

"Look," he tried to explain, "to ascend to spirithood, you need to leave your body needs to properly absorb the elixir, and to do that you need to take a vacation away from your body for a few minutes."

"So... what?" I questioned in shock. "The elixir will just... make my cells magical instead of anti-magical?"

"Yup!" With that, it seemed everything was in place. "All we gotta do is remove your soul for a bit, maybe fix it up a bit since it's been damaged, and then pop it back in when it's done."

"And how the fuck are we going to do that exactly?" I asked, suddenly feeling the weight of the situation dawn on me. "Do I just... like poison myself or something? Jump off a cliff?"

Discord gave a chuckle at the thought. "As amusing as that would be to see, no. You're going to need a magic user to rip out your soul." At my head shake in despair, the spirit of chaos patted me on the shoulder. "Luckily for you, you have one indebted to you!"

And that's how we started to plan my death. It was a fucking terrible idea, but one that would save me. What did I have to lose?

Literally everything.

Author's Note

If this seems kind of rushed, that's because I pumped it out in one day. I've been taking a look at this story from time to time to get inspired for the book I'm now rewriting, and felt like this story should be completed. So hopefully I get off my ass and actually do it when I get bored of rewriting that book.

As per usual, let me know what you think.

And thanks for sticking with me this entire time.